Missed Opportunities
by bethos
Summary: Jadzia and Worf are married, and she has left behind a trail of broken hearts.


Missed Opportunities  
  
Title: Missed Opportunities  
  
Author: Apocalypse  
  
Fandom: DS9  
  
Rating: G  
  
Disclaimer: Not mine, at all, really.  
  
Characters: Quark, Jadzia Dax  
  
Summary: Quark angst. Awww. Pet the Quark.   
  
The good doctor was all too predictable. It took more than a genetically engineered brain to win at tongo. It took focus. You had to have the lobes for it. You couldn't let your heart get in the way of your head, and Bashir had never been very good at that. It took a lot of practice, overruling the heart. He had to admit, he wasn't the best at it either; but he at least could see a distraction ploy when it was right in front of his nose. That's why humans shouldn't try to play Ferengi games.  
  
Perhaps it was unfair, what Quark had done. He'd used his own emotions, his own yearnings - which he'd had so long to think about and rationalize and pin down in so many ways - to intuit the young human's. But fair play was a waste of time and latinum.   
  
"She can touch your lobes, but never your latinum."   
  
Quark sighed a little, with regret and with longing. Jadzia had often touched his latinum, winning it away from him in tongo, but she'd never expressed the slightest interest in his lobes. He'd tried, of course - how could he not? - but she'd made it fairly clear that the teasing, the flirting, that was as far as it would go, could go. If only he hadn't given in so easily. If only he hadn't found what she was willing to give him so ... precious.  
  
There were other women, of course. He couldn't deny that. But there were other men for her, too, and he'd never had a problem with that either. It wasn't true, it wasn't real, they never threw their all into another person. Or when they did, it was never permanent, the other went away. He'd lost Pel that way, and Natima, and Grilka, and so many others - he wasn't sure he could even remember all the names - but Jadzia was always there, always with him, to commiserate with him when he lost another lover, to jolly him out of his doldrums, that mischevious grin on her face that made his heart catch ...  
  
The unabated wellspring of patience and understanding that she had; he wanted it, all to himself, ever since he'd first known her. She could listen to his problems and solve them just by listening, or so it seemed at the beginning. She'd help him with anything, if only he came to her and asked. She was a true friend.   
  
He'd always sort of assumed that one day, when he finally felt that his long bachelorhood had reaped enough of its benefits, he'd ask her to marry him. He'd never told anyone about it - who would he tell? She was the only one he told anything to, and he wasn't going to tell her that - but he'd always imagined that they would end up together, when they were both too old to sow any more wild oats. He'd be just another lifetime for her, but that was all right. They would have been a part of each other for so much of it. He'd always felt that there was more time, that someday he'd take her and that she'd be his and that they'd live as happily ever after as a Ferengi and a Trill could live.  
  
But it seemed that someday had come and gone, and he'd missed the opportunity.  
  
It had slipped right through his fingers. He'd loved her for so long that it was just a dull ache in the back of his mind, cropping up as a sudden pang at unexpected moments, catching him unawares when she smiled at him or laughed at one of his jokes or that cheery-smug-so-proud look on her face when he let her win at tongo or the intensity of her expression when she was doing something work-related and it was taking up almost the whole of her attention or sometimes all she had to do was walk into the room and that was enough to set his heart pumping in his chest. He'd waited and watched and he'd waited too long, because he'd missed it when she finally met have let him in, that narrow window of opportunity when that walking frown she called a husband swept in from what seemed like another world and stole her away from him.  
  
Quark's hands balled into fists and he pressed them, hard, against the bar, inwardly glad that he wasn't busy, that no one was paying attention. He'd missed the opportunity. Story of his life: missed opportunities, one after another, so many failed chances, so many things gone wrong ...   
  
He'd said it wouldn't last and he wanted to believe it. It wasn't that he wanted Jadzia's heart broken. He just wanted her heart to be his. But he'd missed that chance.  
  
At first Quark had thought Jadzia's preoccupation with Worf was just an off-shoot of her love of challenges. She'd wanted to wear him down, make him admit he was attracted to her, and Quark had been all for that; it was just another of Jadzia's little flirtatious enterprises. But then it kept going, and going, and the Klingon refused to break down; she kept trying, and trying, and trying to force him to admit it, and she'd come to Quark more than once railing about how sometimes she thought he didn't even notice. He'd comforted her. Encouraged her, even. Encouraged her! Why had he done that?   
  
"He doesn't even notice, Quark! It's like trying to charm a brick wall," Jadzia had complained.  
  
"He'd have to blind, deaf and dumb not to notice you," Quark had said. "Just keep at it. I'm sure you're getting to him."  
  
He'd encouraged her because it seemed important to her at the time and he hadn't thought it was any more meaningful than any of their other little exploits. They always came back to the same playful status quo in the end. Why should he have expected this time to be any different?  
  
She came into the bar, then, talking animatedly with Major Kira. It hurt him to see her, now, and know that he would never, ever get to hope again. His dreams were dying a slow, painful death, and she was talking and laughing with another of her friends as though nothing in the world had changed. Because for her, none of it had mattered. He had been as much a game to her as any of the other men she toyed with, hadn't he? And he, too blind and besotted to realize.  
  
Quark almost wanted to hate her for it. But he couldn't. He saw how bright and alive her face was, her dynamic gestures, the merry timbre of her laughter, and he couldn't hate her, not even a little bit. He couldn't even hate Worf, which was really irritating, because all Worf had done was to fall in love with her. Quark couldn't find it in him to blame the Klingon for that.  
  
No.  
  
He could only hate himself, for letting all the opportunities slip away. For not telling her how he felt. For losing her before he'd ever really had her. That was all he could do.  
  
"Quark," Major Kira was saying, "could I have some -"  
  
"No!" Quark snapped, and stalked away, leaving one of his Ferengi waiters to deal with the people and everything they wanted of him.  
  
Major Kira stared after him, bewildered. "What's eating him?" she asked.  
  
Jadzia frowned, staring after her friend. "I'm not sure," she said. 


End file.
